RBP3 - [SPOILERS] - Team DIM (Mehmed of HRE)

[Ilios]

Brief chat with Maniac of Maya ingame. He was joking the Mayan Empire was the sole remaining despotism (eg they haven't revolted to Hereditary Rule yet). Seeing Maya have a couple of size 12 cities, I checked out their lands for a bit to find out how they do it.

Maya have had easy access to: Gold-Gems-Silver (total +6 happy after Forge), Dyes, Sugar, Wine, Spices and will soon get access to Silk. I have had easy access to Silver, Gold, Spices and Sugar. That's it. They also have very fertile lands with lots of rivers and floodplains, and still have a lot of easy to reach sites for new cities, while I need to cross the frickin' Khazak Steppesto my east, or the Himalayas to my south east to reach fertile land!

See, I don't believe starting positions should be exactly the same, but having great land is making things pretty easy for some teams in this game...

Anyway, enough whining (although I might post a screenshot of Mayan and HRE lands tonight)

Kyan of Babylon has tried to recruit me to the cause of PAT. If I do abandon CUDDLE and balance the team count to a 7 vs 7, it sure would bring Interesting Times to the world of PB3...

[Ilios]

Ok so I'm changing my plan. Originally I had planned to switch to Pacifism to get a new GP quickly, but I've decided to switch straight to Organised religion and get some infrastructure going. I should have at least Buddhist cities by the time I launch the Golden Age, two of which are new and building Forges, which I will 2-pop whip for 90 hammers each. My GP should arrive in 4 turns, but I'll need to coordinate with Ottoman (heading for Economics) to make sure I can switch to Free Trade before the Golden Age runs out.

[Ilios]

This is an old screenshot. Red dot has been founded some time ago, and Blue dot will be founded in three turns. I'm hurrying to claim the spot, since Portugal have already approached me asking if they good take it. I think I was quite clear ("Over my dead body!" wasn't used, but I think they understood). Portugal has a Knight near the spot, so I'll send a Longbow, C1Sh Axe and two Knights to reinforce the new city. Lots of barbs running around ex-France, who cannot enter England's border because of the Great Wall. (I imagine barbarian hordes arriving at the Wall, scratching their heads and then just following the sign that says "For invasions, please turn right").

Blue dot (to be christened Eastmark) is the last easy to reach good site. From here on it's sub-optimal sites. I'll do a new dot-map later on.

[Ilios]

It is now T138, and the HRE is still going strong!
Ok, so here is map of the world as reference guide (from T129 but still actual). White nations are member of PAT Alliance. Black nations are member of CUDDLE Alliance. Cold War situation, except for the Carthage/Egypt/England vs India/Ottoman war. This might change though, as we are suspecting an attack by Mali and Maya on Inca (to my north).



The north of the HRE:



The south:



The east. Once Biology comes in I can backfill those sites between the capital and the Far East. My next planned site is the Copper/Sheep spot between Midas and Eastmark. I had originally planned to found on the plains hill one tile north, but with Levees soon available, and health a possible issue with the absence of a couple of resources on the map (Seafood, Deer), I've decided to found right along the English border. I should be able to hold the first tiles around the city once its borders pop a couple of times.
I've had a big row with Portugal over the Eastmark site. Dantski's original site was 1E of Eastmark, but I've kept my foot down, and he founded a couple of tiles away. Even though the site is about the same distance from our respective capitals, I felt that with Portugal's land and food advantage, I had dibs to the site. Instead of founding towards me, I expected Dantsi to found to his south where there was plenty of room left. I mean, I did fight a war with France liberating those lands with the intention of claiming them eventually. I probably should have just founded a couple of turns earlier to avoid that nasty spat...
Sorry Dantski!



Demographics. I'm in a golden age, so I guess it's normal I'm n°1 in GDP and MFG.



Military situation. I plan on switching to Nationhood at the end of the golden age and drafting myself some Muskets, and eventually Rifles.



Crop yield. Middle of the pack, but gaining on the leaders steadily (I've got more land I can still expand into)



Manufacturing. Was already steadily rising before the golden age, and has now exploded thanks to the GA and my infrastructure binge (Forge + Org Rel = + 50% Production). Oh and Organised Religion costs me the whole 3 gold more than Paganism. Organised trait really shines on this map (Toroidal/Huge/Emperor)



My GP production site. It's pretty annoying I need to run Artists to keep control of Singa's BFC. Cyneheard of England has decided to make this little cultural battle his pet project...

[meatbalz]

quick thought (coming from someone who hasn't logged into the game and still needs to catch up on the diplo picture). how close are you to hot war with england? the singa mati site is vulnerable to being attacked by a stack of 2-movers from the SE - maybe a couple of extra landskecht in the city wouldn't go amiss. or does england have all its troops committed further W?

[Ilios]

Singa has some extra Landsknechts since last screenshot. England has a lot of its mobile army in Carthage lands to help them defend against Ottomans.

Cyneheard and I have sort of an understanding. Although we are on different sides, we both realise a hot war between us would only increase the other team's chances of winning the game.

So for now we are happy to coexist peacefully...

I'll try to do another update tonight.

[Ilios]

Here's a recent screenshot of Singa Mati, to fully address Meatbalz' concerns...

As you can see, I now have a decent garrisson in the city. Borders will pop again next turn, bringing total cultural defenses to 60%. Together with the Walls and Castle, the city will have a total of 120% defense bonus. Before Cannons make their appearance, attackers will have a very hard time bombing down the defenses of the city. We can rule out fast strikes as well, because the Landsknecht garrisson will have a total strength of around 21 each against Mounted units. (less if England decides to upgrade all its Knights to Cuirrassiers, which are Gunpowder units and can ignore the Castle's and Wall's defenses).

The HRE will also be switching to the Nationhood Civic next turn, which will allow me to create revolutionary armies our of thin air! (well, warm bodies actually... )

Losing the Bureaucracy civic will hurt in the short term, but not that much, because my capital has been converted to production, which means I didn't get that much of a commerce boost to begin with. (it has two mature cottages and a silver mine)



Here's an image of the immediate surroundings of Singa Mati, with my planned next city. I haven't decided on the location yet, because red dot would make it easy to fork it or Singa. I'd like to put it there because it will start putting cultural pressure on the westernmost England tile (marked with an "X") jutting into my lands. Midas' Folly, to Singa's east, has reach 500 culture this turn and is now putting cultural pressure on the easternmost England tile marked with an "X".

Or I could just build Hermitage in Singa Mati and found my new city 1W...



The south east of the empire, with its newest aquisitions, Eastmark and Farvergnugen. My modus operandi has been thus for the past couple of new cities:

- build Culture until border pops.
- convert the city to Buddhism for the 25% Production bonus of Organised Religion Civic.
- double chop (75 hammers) into a Theatre (50 hammers) for early cultural warfare
- overflow into a cheap Granary (30 hammers)
- two-pop whip (75 hammers) a Forge (120 hammers) at size 4
- overflow into a cheap Rathaus (60 hammers)
- then either Barracks or Library depending on the city's specialisation (production or commerce)

I had originally planned to place Farvergnugen 1N on the plains hill, because of the English cultural pressure, but I decided against it. Steam Power is only 15 turns away, and Levees will come in mighty handy (so far, every city in the empire is on a river). The cultural pressure comes from only one city (England's Taoist holy city), which has recently reached 500 culture, which means I'll probably gain control over most tiles of Farvergnugen's BFC once it expands border a second time (100 culture)



GNP Graph. I'm still in a golden age, which explains my n°1 position (I'm currently n°2 behind either Maya or Babylon)
If you're wondering why Krill and Cyneheard are in the middle of the pack, please bear in mind they are PAT's funders, and gold multiplyers (e.g. Marketplace) are harder to get then research multiplyers (e.g. Library)



Crop Yield. There are currently four clear leaders in this game: India, Portugal, Ottomans and Maya (not shown on this graph). I'm in fifth position...
I'd like to get the other graphs as well for comparison purposes, but I've got Krill and Cyneheard double teaming me to try and get research visibility, so I've had to spend EP's on them. I'll be building more Rathauses (which produce espionage points) in the coming turns, and I think I'm holding them off (I've forgotten the formula determining research visibility... ).



MFG. I'd have to wait until the golden age ends to see how well I'm really doing.



I'd like to present to you the city of Bordertown, my future draft camp. I've got two more Theatres finishing in the next three turns, allowing me to build the Globe Theatre, which, I'm sure you know, provides endless happiness. Or more precisely, the city can never go into unhappiness. Bordertown will have a surplus of around 8-9 food at size 6 so I'm confident I can get a draft out of the city every other turn. I am told that with a 16-food surplus you can draft a Musket/Rifle every turn, growing back to size 6 after every draft. Unfortunately, this site was the best I could get on this low-food map. (at least in my corner of the world...)

[Ilios]

Ok, I've added text to the screenshots in the previous post.

I'd like to take this opportunity to give my thoughts about Pitboss 3 so far.

If I had known how much time and effort needed to be put in this game, I'm not sure I would have signed up. It was absolute madness to organise a Tech Trading game with 17 teams spread over three different time zones. The diplomacy in the early stages of the game was so time consuming, there were moments I wasn't really enjoying myself.

After the first tech alliance was set up (and I was the prime recruiter, having met most of the potential candidates), things got a little easier. Lots of players were also losing interest because the game was just too unwieldly, with lots of pauses and disputes. So there was a lot less diplomacy to handle.

For the curious, the first tech alliance was built around Krill's Egypt, India, HRE and Ottoman. Krill was able to plan a very early Oracle and took Alphabet as free technology. Aztec, Carthage, England and Portugal were later added to the grouping, with France added in extremis. Egypt, England and HRE then decided to take out France, because we felt they weren't pulling their weight and made a nice target. After that war and the first exchange of technologies, new alliances were formed: PAT, containing Egypt, England, Mali, Babylon, Maya and Carthage and CUDDLE, containing the remaining teams

In the end I'm glad I participated, because I'd like to think I learned a lot about Civilization gameplay I wouldn't been aware of otherwise.
There were a couple of weedy moves on my part, but all in all I think I did pretty well for a first time player.

Weedy move n° 1 was moving a warrior/settler pair on a forest next to a Lion. Now, this was to be our third city, and we felt that we couldn't wait for the Lion to move away. (the forest we moved the pair on was the settler spot, if only the forest hadn't growed on that tile!). So we took the chance and moved, and the frickin' lion killed the warrior at 5% odds... I'd probably do the same thing if I ever end up in the same situation, but boy that was quite a blow to a 2 city empire!

Weedy move n° 2 was about the same situation. I absolutely wanted to claim a spot, so I moved a settler to the designated spot, with only a horse archer as escort. I founded the city, only to find two barbarian axemen appear next to the city the following turn... I tried to take out the first barb, with decent odds, but lost, again...

As for the game now, it's pretty boring actually. There is a border skirmish going on between India and Ottoman on one side, and Egypt, Carthage and England on the other side. So far, I think only one small Carthage border city got razed, but was refounded soon after.

For the rest the researchers are researching, and the funders are funding. Things might heat up as we're expecting an attack by Mali on either Aztec or Inca. Allthough I don't really have to, I plan to build/draft/whip an expeditionary force to help them out, and frankly because I haven't had a lot of warfare going on in this game so far. As long as the warring doesn't happen on my territory, I plan on just having fun...

[dazedroyalty]

If I had known how much time and effort needed to be put in this game, I'm not sure I would have signed up. It was absolute madness to organise a Tech Trading game with 17 teams spread over three different time zones. The diplomacy in the early stages of the game was so time consuming, there were moments I wasn't really enjoying myself.

This is exactly what I couldn't handle about PB3. At first I was really appreciative that you were handling most of it but over time it made me feel less and less connected to the game. 17 teams was definitely too many! I'm still waiting for someone to start PB4 with smaller team numbers.

Do you think that in a NTT game wars are harder to execute? The tech pace seems to be so fast that you haven't even expanded fully to sites adjacent to Singa Mati. New developments happen so quickly it seems it might be hard to keep pace.

It would be interesting to find out what the HRE would be like today if not for the lost of the first settler. I don't know if the second loss was as significant (though still costly).

[Ilios]

Do you think that in a NTT game wars are harder to execute? The tech pace seems to be so fast that you haven't even expanded fully to sites adjacent to Singa Mati. New developments happen so quickly it seems it might be hard to keep pace.

I guess it depends. If you're behind technologically (bound to happen in a NTT game), you'll have a harder time winning a war.

Wars in this game have been pretty decisive in the past, because of the map. There are no natural borders, and everyone is surrounded by at least 3-4 other teams.

The latest wars between the Tech Alliances have not been decisive, because the opposing forces were pretty much balanced.